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AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



CRITICAL WORK ON THE LATIN SOURCES OF 
THE FIRST CRUSADE. 



Prof. OLIVER J. THATCHER, 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 



(From the Annaal Report of the American Historical Association for 1900, 
Vol. I, jiages 499-509.) 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1901. 



FEB 3 1903 
D. of D. 



AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



CRITICAL WORK ON THE LATIN SOURCES OF 
THE FIRST CRUSADE. 



Prof. OLIVER J. THATCHER, 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 



(From the Atiiiiial ]le))<>rt, of tlie American Historical Association for 1900, 
Vol. I, pages 499-509.) 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1901. 



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XIII— CRITICAL WORK ON THE LATIN SOURCES OF THE 
FIRST CRUSADE. 



By Prof. OLIVKR J. THATCHER, 

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 



499 



CRITICAL WORK ON THE LATIN SOURCES OF THE FIRST 

CRUSADE. 



By Prof. Oliver J. Thatcher, of the University of Chicago. 



When dealing with the history of the crusades in the class 
room I have always met with great surprise, not to say incre- 
dulity, on the part of man}^ students. The legends about 
Peter the Hermit and Godfrey of Bouillon have not only occu- 
pied a prominent place in text-books, but also have done 
yeoman service as homiletic material in illustrating various 
Christian virtues. It is no wonder, therefore, that these 
legends have a firm place in the minds of the youth of the 
land, who are surprised and shocked when told that these 
stories are untrue. The}^ wish to know how it is possible for 
so false accounts to have got into circulation and to have 
found credence. And how do we now know that they are 
false? Such questions find their answer in a history of the 
Histor}^ of the First Crusade. I have thought that it might 
not be unprofitable to repeat here, briefly and in a popular 
form, the substance of the answer I have given my classes. 
The brief time allowed by your committee makes all elabor- 
ation impossible. 

There had been no critical study of the first crusade until 
in 183T, Leopold Ranke, in the University of Berlin, set for 
the members of his seminar the task of examining its sources. 
Their investigations, while not exhaustive, led to unexpected 
discoveries. It was left to one of the members of the class, 
Heinrich von Sybel, to continue the study, the results of 
which he published in 1841 in his History of the First Crusade. 

Leaving aside the accounts which are to be found in Arabic, 
Armenian, and Greek, von Sybel limited himself to a critical 
study and comparison of the Latin sources. While his gen- 
eral conclusions were, in the main, correct, his judgments 

501 



502 AMERTOAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

have been considerably modified by later investigators, such 
as Hagenmeyer, Kugler, Riant, Kuehn, Klein, and others. 

I. The sources of the first rank are not numerous. With- 
out presuming to settle pending controversies in an otihand 
manner, they may be said to consist, first, of the extant let- 
ters of the crusaders to their friends at home. These letters, 
written while on the march, have a peculiar interest and 
value. There is no complete critical edition of them, but 
Riant has given a good account of them in his Inventaire 
Critique des Lettres Historiques des Croisades, 1880. The 
text of the most important but least known letters is added. 

II. In addition to these letters, the sources of the first rank 
consist, in the second place, of four writings by eyewitnesses, 
by men who themselves took part in the crusade. 

1. Of these four writings, probably the most valuable is a 
history of the crusade by an Italian knight. Owing to the 
fact that his name is unknown he is always quoted as the 
Anonymous. Up to the end of 1098 he was in the service of 
Boemund. He then attached himself to Raymond of Tou- 
louse, with whom he made the rest of the journey to Jerusa- 
lem. His account has something of the nature of a diary, 
giving evidence of having been composed, not all at once, 
after the crusade was over, but in sections, at various times 
during the progress of the crusade. It faithfully reflects the 
varying temper and moods of the crusaders. The author 
seems to have completed his work toward the end of the year 
1099. His manuscript, or at least a copy of it, was left at 
Jerusalem, where it was afterwards often consulted and copied 
by pilgrims from the west. In 1889-90 Heinrich Hagen- 
meyer published an excellent critical edition of this work, 
making of it a mine of information about the first crusade. 

2. Of these four writings by eyewitnesses the second in 
importance is a history of the crusade by a priest, named 
Raymond of Aguilers, who went as a chaplain of Raymond, 
Count of Toulouse, the leader of the troops from southern 
France. This account is valuable and interesting for a reason 
which I shall point out at the end of this paper. 

3. The third eyewitness, Fulcher of Chartres, also a priest, 
threw in his lot with Baldwin, who left the main army before 
it I'eached Antioch to seek his foi'tune farther to the east. 
Fulcher is our principal source for the career of Baldwin in 



LATIN SOURCES OF THE FIRST CRUSADE, 503 

the Euphrates Valley and in Edessa. This is also in the nature 
of a diary and was continued by its author to the year 1126. 

4:. The work of the fourth eyewitness, Tudebod, also a 
priest, is of less value than the other three, because he was 
content to copy them and to add little of importance on his 
own authority. 

III. This exhausts the sources which are strictly of the lirst 
rank, but not much inferior to them are to be reckoned two 
writings, not by eyewitnesses, but by men who went to the 
East soon after the crusade was ended. They form a class by 
themselves. They are, first, a brief history of the crusade by 
Ekkehard, known as the abbot of the little monastery of Urach 
on the Upper Main River. In the year 1101 Ekkehard made 
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Being of more than ordinary 
intelligence and judgment he made use of every opportunity 
while in the East to learn of eyewitnesses all he could about 
the crusade. On his return to his home he set down the 
results of his investigations in his valuable little histor}^ of 
the crusade. Hagenmeyer has also published an edition of 
this with an excellent commentary. 

The other writing of this class is by a certain Radulf of 
Caen, who in 1107 joined Boemund and soon afterwards went 
to the East and served for several years under Tancred at 
Antioch. He committed to writing the reminiscences, or 
"table talk" of Tancred, adding whatever interesting items 
he could obtain from other sources. As one of the leaders of 
the crusade Tancred was able to give Radulf nuich important 
information of an almost official character. 

In the letters of the crusaders and in these six writings 
named we have essentially the Latin sources of the first 
crusade. For all the later writers (such as Baldrich of Dole, 
Guibert of Nogent, Henry of Huntingdon, and many others) 
have in the main either copied, abridged, or fused them. 
The additions which such writers have made are relatively 
unimportant. Of the one exception, however, I shall speak 
later. 

Now, if on the basis of these sources the history of the 
crusade were written, it would bear little resemblance to 
what for seven hundred years was believed to have been its 
history. In the first place, in this true history the Pope, 
Urban II, appears as the originator of the crusade. It was 



504 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

in response to his call at Clermont, in 1095, that tlie West took 
up arms and marched to the siege of Jerusalem. The stories 
about Peter the Hermit, his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, his 
visions there, his visit to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, his 
journey to the Pope at Rome, his successful appeals to Urban 
to preach a crusade, and Peter's commanding position as one 
of the great preachers and leaders of the crusade, all are 
found to be without the least foundation in fact. Not from 
Peter the Hermit, but from Alexius, the Emperor at Con- 
stantinople, Urban received the impulse to call the West to 
arm itself and march against the iniidel. 

2, In the second place, the role which Peter the Hermit 
actually did pla}^ is shown to have been an inglorious one. 
After the council of Clermont, in which the crusade had been 
determined on and proclaimed, along with many others, and 
perhaps without a direct commission from the Pope, Peter 
began to preach the crusade. In response to his appeal he 
was joined by several hundred worthless men and corrupt 
women, the most of them without arms. In their ignorance 
they believed that the miraculous power of the cross would 
put the Turks to flight. By being the first on the ground 
they would be the first to recover the holy places and would 
have the first chance to enrich themselves with the boot3^ In 
these vain hopes Peter and his motley band hastily set out for 
the East. As crusaders they felt themselves freed from all 
ordinary obligations and restrictions. While on the march 
they lived by plundering. On their arrival in Constantino- 
ple they behaved in the most shameless manner. They helped 
themselves to whatever they wished; they stole the lead from 
the roofs of the churches and sold it; they even set fire to the 
city. The Emperor, Alexius, was disappointed and disgusted. 
He had been promised reenforcements; he had hoped for an 
arm}' ; he had received onh^ a band of marauders. Seeing the 
danger of their presence in the citj, Alexius quickly set them 
across the Bosporus, and they began their mad march into 
the interior of Asia Minor. Peter soon lost all control over 
them and, with curses upon them, he returned to Constanti- 
nople, leaving them to their fate. They continued their jour- 
ney, but were soon attacked by the Turks and destroyed. 
When the crusaders reached Constantinople Peter joined 
them. When he had first set out from Europe his name had 



LATHS' SOUECES OF THE FIEST CEU8ADE. 505 

been in the mouth of all; but now, in consequence of his fail- 
ure, he became the laughingstock of the army and the butt 
of their jokes. 

3. In the third place, the crusading a,rinj is seen to have 
had no unity. There was no one who was regarded as the 
leader of the whole movement, as the commander of all the 
troops. Each of the many leaders or princes led his own 
men, acted for himself and largely on his own responsibility. 
Godfrey of Bouillon, instead of having command of the whole 
army, as the later legends say, really played only a second- 
ary rdle. 

4. In the fourth place, the motives of these leaders are discov- 
ered to have been of the most worldly sort. They were, almost 
without exception, adventurers, soldiers of fortune, seeking an 
opportunity to enrich themselves and to get possession of some 
little kingdom or principality where they might establish an 
independent power for themselves. And when such an oppor- 
tunity presented itself they seized it with avidity and deserted 
the crusade. Thus Boemund got possession of Antioch and 
refused to go on to Jerusalem. Baldwin left the army and 
went to make his fortune at Edessa. It was through no lack of 
effort that Tancred failed to find a suitable place to establish 
himself in power. And Kaymond of Toulouse was so bent on 
settling by the way that nothing but the burning of his tents 
by the crusaders and the desertion of his troops could compel 
him to go on to Jerusalem. 

6. In the fifth place, this ambition of the leaders is seen to 
have made them bitterly hostile to each other. The troops 
of Tancred engaged in a desperate battle with those of Bald- 
win. Boemund and Raymond of Toulouse made war on each 
other, and so fierce did their hostility become that Raymond 
spent the rest of his life in a prolonged though unsuccessful 
effort to destroy Boemund. 

6. In the sixth place, the success of the crusade is found to 
have been, in fact, very small. The so-called Kingdom of 
Jerusalem was confined almost to the city walls. When the 
crusade was over and the city had been, in reality, thrust upon 
Godfrey, there remained with him probably not 2,000 fighting 
men. The weakness of such a principality is apparent. Noth- 
ing but the internal quarrels of the Mohammedans made it 
possible for Godfrey, with this mere handful of men, to main- 



506 AMERICATSr HISTOEICAL ASSOCIATION. 

tain himself in the heart of a hostile country. As it was, he 
led a most precarious existence and held fast to Jerusalem 
more through the weakness of the enemy than by his own 
strength. 

We are thus confronted with several questions which, of 
course, can be here touched on only in the briefest manner. 
Why was the true history of the crusade so quickly forgotten? 
Why did Peter the Hermit rob the Pope of the glory of hav- 
ing caused the crusade? What clothed the leaders with sanc- 
tity and heroism and caused their selhsh careers to be forgotten ? 
What raised Godfrey of Bouillon into the position of com- 
mander of the whole crusading arnw, gave him the character 
of a saint, and exalted his huml)le rule into a magnihcent 
kingdom ? 

I can here only indicate in a general way where the answers 
to these questions are to be sought. It must be said, first of 
all, that the crusade made a most profound and lively impres- 
sion on Europe. Being a new and unique movement, it shook 
Europe as she had probably never been shaken before. It 
took hold of what we may call the popular imagination of the 
time and stirred it into eager creative activity. This popular 
imagination, by way of naive interpretation and invention, 
informed the ignorance, satisfied the pride, and appeased the 
curiosity of the west. Within a few years it had woven about 
the crusade and its leaders so thick a web of story, legend, 
and romance that their true history was completel}'' obscured. 

The purpose of the crusade, the recovery of the holy places, 
lifted it into an atmosphere of sanctitj^ and heroism in which 
every crusader appeared with the halo of a saint and hero 
combined. 

From the very first, poets began to handle the histor}^ of 
the crusade in an imaginative way. In fact, the crusaders 
themselves made a beginning of this. They composed many 
couplets and songs to cheer themselves while on the march, 
and especially during the long siege of Antioch. A daring- 
deed, an anuising mishap, a ridiculous situation — in short, a 
great variety of incident — would furnish some rh3'mester a 
theme on which to exercise his wit, imagination, and skill in 
versification. These verses naturally displayed a wide range 
of sentiment. Along with praise, the}^ contained coarse wit, 
rough humor, and l)iting irony. Of the latter, Peter the Her- 



LATITSr SOUKCES OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 50 7 

mit came in for a large share. The camp evidently took great 
delight in treating him in a mock heroic way. For his brief 
popularity he now paid with a long period of humiliation, the 
object of jeers and gibes. But even these resulted eventuall}^ 
in his glorification. For when these songs were carried to the 
west their character was not perceived by those who had not 
been with the crusade. To the undiscerning westerners, ready 
to believe the wildest things, such songs appeared to be sober 
statements of facts. They passed for history. Western poets 
then began their work, and, within a few years after the end 
of the crusade, there were several poems in existence dealing 
with one or another of its phases. Early in the twelfth century 
a certain knight, named Gregory, wrote a history of the 
crusade, in verse. In Antioch there was a fugitive poem in 
circulation which was known as " The Song of the Poor." It 
dealt largely with Peter the Hermit and embodied many of 
the camp songs just spoken of. It would be difficult to say 
which prevailed in it, the heroic or the mock heroic. Raymond, 
then Prince of Antioch, caused it to be reduced to writing. 
In its original form it no longer exists, but much of it seems 
to have been incorporated b}^ a certain pilgrim, named Richard, 
in his poem, "The Siege of Antioch." Godfre}^ of Bouillon 
and Boemund are Richard's heroes. This poem by Richard 
was taken by Graindor of Douay and made the basis for his 
poem, "The Song of Antioch," which became so widely 
known. It existed in many editions, f oi additions were made 
to it wherever it circulated. It is purelj^ a work of the 
imagination. 

These poems were recited all over Europe and regarded as 
the real history of the crusade. In the presence of their 
wealth of imagery and detail the meager and simple accounts 
of eyewitnesses were forgotten. 

The cause of the glorification of Godfrey of Bouillon is not 
far to seek. Since he was put in charge of the Holy Grave, 
the most sacred object in the world, it is but natural that the 
West should have developed the most extravagant ideas about 
his character, his sanctity, and his ability. They reasoned 
that, if he had not possessed the most transcendent qualities 
of heart and mind, he would not have been chosen to so hon- 
orable a position. Poets sang his praises, and, by a natural 



508 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

association of ideas, connected him with the story of the Hoh^ 
Grail and the Knig'ht with the Swan. 

Since this popular imag-ination and the poetic spirit began, 
from the first, to enlarge on the facts and to add to them, it 
follows that every later work on the crusade contains more 
and more that is legendary. How quickly these stories and 
legends took the place of the truth may be seen from the 
work of Albertus Aquensis, written, probably, about 1125. 
It contains a well-developed legend about Peter the Hermit. 

It remained for William, who, in 1174, was made archbishop 
of Tyre, to perpetuate this legendary material by incorporat- 
ing it in his famous history of the crusading movement. We 
are interested here only in William's ability as an historian. 
In common with his age he believed all that was written. He 
was master of a fine Latin style; he could narrate with great 
facility. He gathered his materials from all quarters, and, 
instead of sifting them, he used them all. Two or three var}^- 
ing accounts of the same event he skillfully wove into one. 
His work, being an interesting, pleasing, and complete narra- 
tive of the crusade, easil}^ displaced all other accounts, and, for 
six hundred years, was the source from which the world drew 
all its knowledge of the first crusade. It was Von Sybel who 
deposed him from his high position when he published his 
book in 1811. 

Although much has been done, there is still a good deal of 
preparatory work to be done before a perfectly satisfactory 
history of the first crusade can be written. Leaving out of 
account the Greek and Oriental sources, 1 must confine my 
remarks to the Latin. For the letters of the crusaders the 
work of Riant is, perhaps, sufiicient. Hagenmeyer has pub- 
lished an excellent commentary on the " Gesta" of the anony- 
mous knight and on Ekkehard's work. There is need of sim- 
ilar commentaries on the accounts of Raymond of Aguilers, 
Fulcher, Tudebod, and Radulf . These would all be compara- 
tively easy but fruitful tasks. 

Of all the other sources only the work of Albert presents 
any great difiiculties. Von Sybel thought very lightl}?^ of 
Albert; Kugler, in trying to rehabilitate him, has probably 
gone too far in the opposite direction; Kuehn has taken a 
middle ground. The last word on the subject has not yet 
been said. It is to be hoped that some one will now take his 



LATIN SOUECES OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. 509 

work in hand and g'ive us a critical edition of it, paying spe- 
cial attention to the analysis and identification of its sources. 

Closel}^ akin to this and having- some bearing on the sub- 
ject, although it is, in my judgment, rather a literary topic, 
would be a similar study of the poems dealing with the cru- 
sade. 

One of these preparatory studies would be extremely inter- 
esting and valuable on another account. The priest, Ra}^- 
mond of Aguilers, was at the head of a band of swindlers who 
made gain by pla3dng on the credulity, superstitions, and reli- 
gious simplicit}" of the crusaders. It was he who, with the 
aid of a few accomplices, phmned and executed the fraud of 
discovering the holy lance in Antioch. Plaving been charged 
with this, he wrote his account of the crusade as his defense, 
but while trying to clear himself he has unwittingl}^ betrayed 
his guilt. In addition to valuable information about the cru- 
sade his book would furnish the basis for an instructive chap- 
ter in the history of mediaeval fraud. 



021 549 If 3 ' 



